: My Quick take on new movie “The Girl on the Train” (Netflix)
In my view Netflix has goofed up the release date of this so-called “thriller/murder mystery”, they should have done it much before Amazon’s “Drishyam 2” was released. Now the audience who have watched a classic thriller like Drishyam 2, how can they relish a poor desi adaptation of a not so popular Hollywood movie. It is like offering a roadside ice ka gola to a person who has just relished sumptuous falooda.
There are umpteen reviews about this girl on the train talking about “how badly made remake it is”, now I haven’t seen the firangi version hence I would not comment or make a comparison. But I don’t understand why the desi film also has to be shot in the same location as that of firangi original? If you want to ‘adapt’ the plot to an Indian audience then you should have changed the plots setting. This reminds me of great Gulzar, he had made Parichay in Hindi, it was an outstanding movie and I would rate it as one of the best Gulzaar’s classics. It took me years to realize that Parichay was an adaptation of “Sound of Music”, another evergreen classic.
Since it’s a murder mystery, let me not spill out any beans. The broad outline of the plot is about an alcoholic lawyer (Pariniti Chopra) who is a commuter on a local train post her breakup from a troubled marriage. On her daily train journey, she watches a girl (Aditi Haidari)in a house next to the track and gets interested in her. This lawyer is a complex character, she is headstrong, alcoholic, has amnesia & is unemployed. As the movie progresses, she gets accused of murdering Aditi. Is she guilty of murder, is she framed, this the broad outline of the plot.
The suspense and thrill element is very very elementary, it is shot in an old Hindi suspense movie style where you shoot the entire murder sequence but while showing it to the public just remove important reels from the sequence and show it in climax dhend tedhang.
On a lighter note, in the movie train is an essential part of the plot, which led me to think what if the movie was shot on Mumbai's local train? A girl traveling in Mumbai local train, what could she witness across the tracks? Especially in morning hours (hope things have changed now after “swatch Bharat Abhiyan and Akki’s Toilet Ek-prem Katha).
You can very well avoid this train
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